


It's Just in a Year

by Eyrdamun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-07 16:05:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyrdamun/pseuds/Eyrdamun
Summary: A persona is the true self, an old shadow, and the death of self is a change of heart.[Drabble set]





	1. A Face under Layers

“No, I don’t love you.”   
  
Akira laughs hard, throws his head back and bares his pale neck. Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as his laugh rings out like a siren’s song in the stuffy attic.   
  
Come closer, it sings into Akechi’s ears. Give in, it whispers like a lover right into his pulse.   
  
“What brought this on?”   
  
Akechi wonders if Akira is honest, or playing around as he is known to do.   
  
“There is no ‘you’,” Akechi folds his hands on his lap. “No 'you’ to love, no 'you’ to get to know.”   
  
“That doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
“Akira Kurusu has been gone for a while.”   
  
“I’m right here, you know?” Akechi glares holes into Akira’s skull. They are brown and not grey like Akira’s. They aren’t a bullet.  
  
“It was Arsène, my original Persona.”   
  
The squeak of leather is loud in the silence, and Akechi’s knuckles must be ghost white under the gloves.“Are you saying there was never any you?”  
  
“I’m saying there was always 'me’, and that there were always a million masks.”   
  
Akira stands up and approaches Akechi to flop on the couch in contradicting grace.   
  
“So don’t lie, Akechi-kun.” Akira bumps their knees together, he smirks, he leans- he’s a monster and a thief.  
  
“Tell me- which of my masks did you fall for?”   
  
“You’re vile.”  
  
Again, Akira just laughs.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s no Akira Kurusu.   
  
It’s unfortunate,  he died so young.  He left behind an animated corpse and it replaced its face with a mirror that reflects back what the viewer wants.    
  
There’s no real expression on the glass,  not really- so he wears powerless specs to distort the truth. There can’t be a core in order to be a successful gentleman thief.  
  
Arsène lights up, Akira does too for thou art i and i art thou.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a boy at the tv station.   
  
He looked lost, spoke words contradicting authority all the while stumbling as he walked in shoes too big.   
  
That boy, on the set, refuted his point of view. The lights blinding Akechi didn’t hide him from view as much as the light refracting from his glasses did. Akechi approached him in the end.  The closer he got,  the less remarkable and more attention stealing he became.  
  
There were two boys facing each other. Akechi saw in the glasses sad eyes staring back.   
  
“Hello,” he tried to say. “What’s your name?”   
  
He didn’t say that.  He couldn’t- he felt like the boy in front of him had no name anyway. Instead, he quoted intellectuals and preened his feathers for no reason. The boy smiled small, nodded and mumbled as Akechi left   
  
“See you around.”   
  
Akechi turned to meet the boy’s back and, as he walked away, saw life that shouldn’t be within someone so seemingly muted.

\--------------

Akira can’t hold his tongue. Can’t reign his thoughts in,  can’t reign his emotions and his new and true self in.  
  
Arsène came during the dusk of a new world being birthed. He turned to smoke so black that the storm crawled around the light of a fake God to bring an artificial night and the chains that held Akira’s mask were broken by their own hands.   
  
Satanael was born, and so was Akira.   
  
He doesn’t know how to deal with not being an empty shell, he doesn’t know how to be now that he was born at seventeen in the battle field.  
  
He takes out Akechi’s  tie from his bedside drawer and places it on the desk with the toy weapons Crow used alongside them. He examines them without really learning anything, but that wasn't the point anyway.   
  
“Hey, back when we first met you presented yourself, remember? ” Akira smiles gently,  and truthfully. “It’s been a long time coming…”  
  
Akira bows lightly, bending to show off his newly acquired core.  
  
“I’m Akira Kurusu. Please take good care of me.”

 

* * *

 

 

When Arsène is a past self by any other name in a book, Akira kisses Akechi like he means it, but doesn’t feel it. He kisses Akechi as if his body weren’t his own, as if his desires weren’t his to name and own.   
  
When Arsène leaves, and Satanael is the title of the book of self, Akira kisses the alcohol in the lips of a stranger in a bar. He kisses the stranger with feeling, mouthing instruction and words into lips to move the person to his song. But he doesn’t mean any of it-   
  
No, he doesn’t mean it at all.

 

* * *

 

 

Akechi trails his hands up and down Akira’s spine as he brews coffee. He isn’t allowed there, behind the counter, but neither of them care. It's late and the Boss already left.   
  
“There’s a person, somewhere,  in here.” His fingers turn to claws as he scratches down the vertebrae line. Akira pours the coffee in a cup with a hum.   
  
“ Are you trying to drag it out?”   
  
“Them,” Akechi corrects. “A person is alive.”  
  
“A body is alive.”   
  
Akira passes Akechi the coffee mug.   
  
“Good luck.”   
  
Akechi thinks that he never had any of it. And that it’s probably for the best when he’ll be killing whatever he’ll take out anyway. 

 

* * *

 

 

A dead boy and a doomed boy share a coffee in a cozily lit cafe.   
  
“We will all die soon enough.”   
  
A chuckle.   
  
“I’m already dead.”   
  
“I will join you soon enough.”   
  
The corpse holds the hand of the living.   
  
“That would be nice.”   
  


\-----------

  
A living boy sits by a yellow phone in a cafe, drinking mountain blues.  
  
“I wanted to be together.”  
  
He circles the rim of the mug with his pointer left finger.

 

* * *

 

 

“Perhaps, ” Akechi whispers into his cup and accuses into the empty cafe, “you so readily accept the changing of hearts because it’s a metaphysical death and the first victim…” He trails off as he takes a sip, a poor excuse for suspense building when they both know what he will say. The clinging of the cup against its plate rings like bells, and Akira meets Akechi’s eyes. “Am i wrong?”  
  
“No,” Akira chuckles. “But does it change anything?”   
  
The first death was Akira’s. His other self written like a footnote in a compendium surrounded by blue velvet.   
  
“I find it very much does.”


	2. A Rose's Thorns between Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haru/Shu, with some HaruShuAke.

“Oh, makes sense  that you’ll need stress relieving,” Akira barely looked up from where he was sprawled on the bed as he spoke. Instead, he opens the window and swats at Morgana. “Go check on Futaba, she’ll need it.” 

Haru sighs as she watches Morgana leave. She softly places her purse besides Akira’s bag on the table near the stairs, tiptoeing on floorboards that creak regardless of how you step on them. She tries anyway. Turning, she sees Akira is looking at her.   
  
“What do you want to do today?”   
  
Haru wants to be honest. To tell him that she wants him to love her back with the same intensity. To tell him that she can help him forget if for a night and forevermore. To tell him that she can pour flowers down his throat and choke him with her love so that then she can bring him back to life with a petal soft kiss. To tell him life can still be a fairy tale, if he'd like she'd be his knight. Instead, she says,   
  
“I should be asking you that.”  
  
Akira looks momentarily startled and shrugs.  
  
“I don’t want anything in particular.” He sits up on the bed and beckons her to it by patting the spot next to him.     
  
“Aki-kun…”  
  
“I’m serious,” he smiles.   
  
She knows, of course Haru knows, and she just gathers him in her arms. Squeezing him against her chest, kissing the crown of his head with both her lips and her falling scattered tears only to feel him crumble in her hold. Akira trembles between her arms and the tremors shake her bones. They make her sway, but she doesn't break from their vibrations, and dances poised and tall with durability and elasticity.  
  
She knows he means it when he says he wants nothing at all. Haru doesn’t mind, it’s about time that she took her turn being a pillar of strength and comfort. It's what she wants.  
  
She combs his hair and hums, she feels tears seeping through the fabric and a silent sob that shakes them both as Akira cries.

They had come back from accomplishing the heist on Shido Masayoshi's heart only mere hours ago. It was a heavy treasure to carry, an anchor of a burden they pulled from the sea and Haru hopes dearly that it will get easier, that it will rust, with time.

The months pass, a demiurge falls and the morning stars dons a black coat. The year comes to an end and after everything is said and done, after Akira comes back and is cleared from his charges, Haru can’t help but to still feel the gaping hole Akechi left in their group.   
  
For most of the thieves, it has been mended to an extent, ignored and shrunken enough that they can turn a blind eye to its existence in cruel irony. But Haru sees the way Akira’s eyes linger on the chair close to the payphone, can see the bleeding still wound that Akechi shot, carved, gouged out in him. But unlike where Akechi had hurt, the red streaks start at Akira's eyes instead of the middle of his forehead and only reveal themselves when he thinks he is alone.  
  
She can see it as she sees the loss of weight- Akira’s so light now- and the increased fidgeting. Akira stands near all of them, but not close enough, with his leg bouncing up and down and filled with nervous energy as they chatter. It seems paradoxical how his eyes stray yet remain frozen and unfocused. He still listens to them when they talk, small hums and playful retorts leaving his lips with the right tilt and intonation.

An intonation that sounds too right that it bleeds into pretend.   
  
When she follows him upstairs one night, he doesn’t notice her as he lifts his shirt up a bit. There are new marks- scars and scratches she hadn’t seen on Christmas and–   
  
He jumps when he faces her.   
  
“Oh! I didn’t see you.”  
  
Akira covers himself with the fabric and his mourning veil is back to hiding his heart from the world.  
  
Haru apologizes softly. For invading his privacy like this, for the things she noticed and the ones she is certain she didn't, for the thoughts she had and for the ones she doesn't, and for the way that, in the end, Akechi Goro didn’t leave much of gap in her heart.

* * *

   
"How's the country like?"

"Slow paced," Akira places a coffee in front of her and of himself. Their cups are twin white, but Haru's coffee has a flower drawn in the foam and Akira's is a normal black coffee with no white decorations.

She sees him take a sip- no sugar, no cream.

"What else?"

"Everyone knows everyone else, so word travels really fast."

Haru doesn't want to disturb the flower in her cup, but she thinks in her lungs and heart there's a whole garden the foamy petals can join. She knows it will- with every passing moment, both sleeping and waking, the flowers spread and grow more and more radiant in her mouth. Smiling softly, Haru takes the cup with both hands as she speaks. "That's kind of like Shujin."

Akira chuckles his agreement into his cup. Haru frowns into hers as she catalogues his answers. Shujin isn't kind.

"What is your family like?"

"Like your average two working parents with a single child family."

Haru sips as she waits for an elaboration she knows won't come. Her cup clinks against the platter, she wants to ask more about -  
  
"How's the company going?"

Haru knows her time is up for today. But it's ok, it'll be alright, she'll have tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. And if not then, someday- she's certain of it in the warmth she finds in his eyes.

 

* * *

 

"Do you really think you can have him someday, Akechi-kun?"

"I already do. If I may remind you, you took him with me tonight," he chuckles. It's cold outside and the humour was never there to begin with. They already know exactly how they feel about one another.

"You know what I mean." The detective is the first to start walking away from LeBlanc, pace steady and strides long as he pushes his bike. He doesn't bother facing her when he replies loud enough for the words to reach her, quiet enough for them to go unheard in a dusty attic towering behind them.

Let the Leader rest for the night is the agreement. Let lying crows lie.

"Perhaps you should fret over yourself first and foremost." His tone is venom sweet, enhanced by the still remaining taste of Akira's kisses and moans on their skin and ears- a poison sweeter still than he could ever emulate.

"Sound advice for the both of us I'd say," she replies with her own dulcet war declaration. 

//

"It pisses me off. You piss me off," Noir hisses too lowly for the rest of the thieves to hear as they traverse the tainted Shibuya. "You can have him, and I..."

She trails off, eyes caressing Joker's back as he leads their charge and Crow's own eyes join her. In front of them, he cuts a black winged and svelt silhouette in a Fake God's garden. Like a fallen angel, a guiding, morning and mourning black star. "I..."

Crow doubts the validity of her words and even moreso of the ones that get caught in her throat. He saw the way Joker's eyes would melt from storm grey to silver jewelry when they landed on her. He saw the way his hands gently trailed up her arm or rested on the small of her back. It was hard to forget when envy and jealousy crawled up his guts in mirrored twin movements.

"I hate you for so many things, make up for all of them." He, too, hates her for many things. Joker looks behind at them, smile outshining a God's holy light as he beckons them with a flick of his wrist. They both listen and walk atop of bones of angels.

 

* * *

 

The chandeliers on the ceiling glint, their light reflects on champagne flutes and everything appears to be made of gold. The ballroom is decadent, filthy rich, and the people in it stink even more than whatever fancy food a passing waiter carried in a tray. The ballroom is blinding, marble white pillars with gold and too well polished floors that make Akira want to exchange his red framed glasses for sunglasses.

If he did, he would stand out more than he does already from all the attendants, he thinks as he scans the room. Haru would find it hysterical, he should ask her what would be more ridiculous- multicoloured star shaped glasses or heart frames that he could turn into a silly pick up line or two for her whenever she is around. Mid-internal debate, his eyes catch on someone. 

"Oh? Wasn't he on Shido's ship?"

"Was he? " Haru sips her champagne, legs crossed and Akira leans on the chair's arm. His companion's arm curls around his waist in a sign of both possession and support as he leans closer for their conspiring whispering. Her eyes trail however, landing with narrowing lids on the person Akira pointed out. He smirks and nods. "Well then, Joker. If you would set up this ..." Haru trails off for a second. Her voice slips and Noir's eyes shine brighter than the main chandelier in the room. "Hold up, that would be great. "

He knows that Joker's smirk paints his face as he stands with a flourish and offers his hand to her partner in crime.

"Milady."

"My gentleman thief."

Hand in hand, they walk arm in arm with bullet loaded tongue and razor edge sharp smiles.

//

The parties are boring when Akira can't subtly snipe at anyone, they've decided on that aeons ago. It's nice to have him all dolled up and draped over her arms like a fur shawl, don't get Haru wrong, but constantly smiling and nodding just takes its toll.

"Ms. Okumura, you and your date-?!"

Akira twirls on his feet, more graceful than a ballerina in his heels and daintily places his hand on Haru's shoulder. Haru's dress looks as good on him as it does on her, and his suit was made for her to shed and wear as she pleased anyway. The ballroom attendants are scarce and the few remaining stare. Ennui becoming overbearing, Haru and Akira were themselves about to leave, and Akira suggested they go out with a bang. He had meant it more than metaphorically and he clacked the heel on the marble floor.

"Don't I look lovely? "

"I'd say enchanting, Aki-kun."

They exchange smiles, wicked and glinting like a knife's edge and an ax's blade. "So enchanting in fact, I'm looking forward to undressing you with my teeth."

Akira shudders under her eyes, but she's the only one that notices as he laughs nervously.

"Not in front of party-goers, dear."

 He needs some time to recover either way- they had to have exchanged clothes somehow after all and Akira would never deny Haru anything she saw that she liked.

* * *

When the Phantom Thieves leave Nijima's palace and part way as their leader is carried off to his possible steel coffin, Haru stops Akechi. They stare each other down, Akechi letting out a tired sigh as he moves to sidestep her with an exhausted "We did what we could, we didn't know."

"He loved you, and he loved you until the very end."

Akechi's eyes widen as he looks back to Haru. It's her turn to not look at him.

"I thought you should know, because wherever you're heading- you won't see him again for him to be the one to tell you."

A useless threat, sentiment, and statement. Akechi had already known and accepted that long ago.

He wishes her good night with a sardonic smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haru's birthday is on the 5th of dec and this is the only written Haru stuff I have RIP  
> (Also Yes Hello, I love Trophy Husband!Akira)

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to point out any mistakes- these were written when I had just finished the game iirc, and were never proofread tbh.


End file.
